Titanic Being Eaten by Destructive Bacteria
A new bacterium isolated from the Titanic wreck is accelerating the wreck's disintegration into a pile of dust.
By Rossella Lorenzi
Tue Dec 7, 2010 03:09 PM ET
THE GIST
* A bacterium isolated from rust samples of the RMS Titanic appears to be accelerating the wreck's disintegration.
* The bacteria are eating the wreck's metal and leaving behind "rusticles," or icicle-like deposits of rust.
* The porous rusticles will eventually dissolve into fine powder.
Dalhousie University
A rust stain may be all that will remain of the RMS Titanic in 15 to 20 years, according to new research into the submerged ocean liner wreck.
Working at a depth of over two miles, a never-before-seen bacterial species is devouring the hull of the so-called "unsinkable ship" on the Atlantic seabed where it sank on April 15, 1912, killing 1,517 people.
[Never before seen outside a lab, maybe. Does anyone really believe this horse shit implication that this is some spontaneous organism that suddenly decided to eat iron?]
Named Halomonas titanicae, the bacterium was isolated from samples of so-called rusticles present on the wreck.
These dark orange structures look like icicles but are made up of rust.
"The isolate was obtained from rusticle samples collected during the Akademic Keldysh expedition in 1991, at the site of the wreck," Canadian and Spanish researchers write in the latest issue of the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology published on Dec. 8.
Removed from the hull using the articulated arm of the Mir 2 robotic submersible, the rusticles were transferred to plastic collection bags and transported aseptically to the surface to be analyzed.
Using DNA technology, the researchers discovered that the rusticles were formed by a combination of 27 different strains of bacteria.
Among the bacteria feasting on the Titanic, there was a brand new member of the salt-loving Halomonas genus.
"We don't know yet whether Halomonas titanicae arrived aboard the RMS Titanic before or after it sank," said lead researcher Henrietta Mann, at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada.
Able to adhere to steel surfaces, the new species has led to the formation of knob-like mounds of corrosion. Covered with such rust mounds, the wreck of the Titanic is at risk of disintegrating into dust, as the porous rusticles eventually dissolve into fine powder.
Discovered in 1985, about two miles below the ocean surface and some 329 miles southeast of Newfoundland, Canada, the wreck of the Titanic has been progressively deteriorating.
Originally made up of 50,000 tons of iron, the ship has dramatically split apart: the stern and the bow lie some 2,000 feet apart in opposite directions.
While potentially dangerous to underwater metal structures like shipwrecks, as well as offshore oil and gas pipelines, the newly discovered species could also offer positive applications for industry.
"The new specie of bacteria plays a significant part in the recycling of iron structures in deep ocean. It could be useful in the disposal old naval and merchant ships and oil rigs," Mann told Discovery News.
According to Bhavleen Kaur, science educator at the Ontario Science Centre, Toronto, Canada, finding a new species is important, but even more exciting is the environment found in the rusticles.
"Out of the consortium of microbes, whose actions are responsible for the formation of rusticles on the Titanic wreck, Halomonas titanicae is the first to be fully characterized and named. How many more novel species are living within the rusticles? How did they get there or did they evolve within this artificially created mini-ecosystem?...These microbes can be an addition to the tool kit when we carry further investigations into corrosive processes," Kaur told Discovery News.
2011-01-06
Microbes ate BP oil deep-water plume: study | Reuters
[Newly discovered? Are you fucking kidding me? That shit was invented and deliberately released.]
The micro-organisms were apparently stimulated by the massive oil spill that began in April, and they degraded the hydrocarbons so efficiently that the plume is now undetectable, said Terry Hazen of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
These so-called proteobacteria -- Hazen calls them "bugs" -- have adapted to the cold deep water where the big BP plume was observed and are able to biodegrade hydrocarbons much more quickly than expected, without significantly depleting oxygen as most known oil-depleting bacteria do.
Oxygen is essential to the survival of commercially important fish and shellfish; a seasonal low-oxygen "dead zone" forms most summers in the Gulf of Mexico, caused by farm chemical run-off that flows down the Mississippi River.
Hydrocarbons in the crude oil from the BP spill actually stimulated the new microbes' ability to degrade them in cold water, Hazen and his colleagues wrote in research published on Tuesday in the journal Science.
In part, Hazen said, this is because these new "bugs" have adjusted over millions of years to seek out any petroleum they can find at the depths where they live, which coincides with the depth of the previously observed plume, roughly 3000 feet. At that depth, water temperature is approximately 41 degrees F (5 degrees C).
FEASTING ON HYDROCARBONS
Long before humans drilled for oil, natural oil seeps in the Gulf of Mexico have put out the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez spill each year, Hazen said.
Another factor was the consistency of the oil that came from the Macondo wellhead: light sweet Louisiana crude, an easily digestible substance for bacteria, and it was dispersed into tiny droplets, which also makes it more biodegradable.
These latest findings may initially seem to be at odds with a study published last Thursday in Science by researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which confirmed the existence of the oil plume and said micro-organisms did not seem to be biodegrading it very quickly.
However, Hazen and Rich Camilli of Woods Hole both said on Tuesday that the studies complement each other.
The Woods Hole team used an autonomous robot submarine and a mass spectrometer to detect the plume, but were forced to leave the area in late June, when Hurricane Alex threatened. At that time, they figured the plume was likely to remain for some time.
But that was before the well was capped in mid-July. Hazen said that within two weeks of the capping, the plume could not be detected, but there was a phenomenon called marine snow that indicated microbes had been feasting on hydrocarbons.
As of Tuesday, there was no sign of the plume, Hazen said.
That doesn't mean there is no oil left from the 4.9 million barrels of crude that spilled into the Gulf after the April 20 blowout at BP's Deepwater Horizon rig. The U.S. government estimated on August 4 that 50 percent of the BP oil is gone from the Gulf and the rest is rapidly degrading.
Microbes ate BP oil deep-water plume: study
WASHINGTON |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Manhattan-sized plume of oil spewed deep into the Gulf of Mexico by BP's broken Macondo well has been consumed by a newly discovered fast-eating species of microbes, scientists reported on Tuesday. [Newly discovered? Are you fucking kidding me? That shit was invented and deliberately released.]
The micro-organisms were apparently stimulated by the massive oil spill that began in April, and they degraded the hydrocarbons so efficiently that the plume is now undetectable, said Terry Hazen of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
These so-called proteobacteria -- Hazen calls them "bugs" -- have adapted to the cold deep water where the big BP plume was observed and are able to biodegrade hydrocarbons much more quickly than expected, without significantly depleting oxygen as most known oil-depleting bacteria do.
Oxygen is essential to the survival of commercially important fish and shellfish; a seasonal low-oxygen "dead zone" forms most summers in the Gulf of Mexico, caused by farm chemical run-off that flows down the Mississippi River.
Hydrocarbons in the crude oil from the BP spill actually stimulated the new microbes' ability to degrade them in cold water, Hazen and his colleagues wrote in research published on Tuesday in the journal Science.
In part, Hazen said, this is because these new "bugs" have adjusted over millions of years to seek out any petroleum they can find at the depths where they live, which coincides with the depth of the previously observed plume, roughly 3000 feet. At that depth, water temperature is approximately 41 degrees F (5 degrees C).
FEASTING ON HYDROCARBONS
Long before humans drilled for oil, natural oil seeps in the Gulf of Mexico have put out the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez spill each year, Hazen said.
Another factor was the consistency of the oil that came from the Macondo wellhead: light sweet Louisiana crude, an easily digestible substance for bacteria, and it was dispersed into tiny droplets, which also makes it more biodegradable.
These latest findings may initially seem to be at odds with a study published last Thursday in Science by researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which confirmed the existence of the oil plume and said micro-organisms did not seem to be biodegrading it very quickly.
However, Hazen and Rich Camilli of Woods Hole both said on Tuesday that the studies complement each other.
The Woods Hole team used an autonomous robot submarine and a mass spectrometer to detect the plume, but were forced to leave the area in late June, when Hurricane Alex threatened. At that time, they figured the plume was likely to remain for some time.
But that was before the well was capped in mid-July. Hazen said that within two weeks of the capping, the plume could not be detected, but there was a phenomenon called marine snow that indicated microbes had been feasting on hydrocarbons.
As of Tuesday, there was no sign of the plume, Hazen said.
That doesn't mean there is no oil left from the 4.9 million barrels of crude that spilled into the Gulf after the April 20 blowout at BP's Deepwater Horizon rig. The U.S. government estimated on August 4 that 50 percent of the BP oil is gone from the Gulf and the rest is rapidly degrading.
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